Originally aired in the U.S. on December 8, 2002, the episode attracted nearly 12.5 million viewers, more in its timeslot than any competing program on broadcast TV.
Tony asks him to deal with Carmine and make it look like "an outside job"; Christopher pays two heroin dealers and delivers instructions for the hit.
Though Johnny still intends to go through with the hit, Tony decides against it and orders Christopher to silence — kill — the hired guns.
Tony takes Carmela on a surprise trip to "Whitecaps," a house on the Jersey Shore he is thinking of buying.
Tony meets the house's owner, Alan Sapinsly, an attorney, and offers cash in the shortest possible time allowed by law.
Tony returns home and becomes violent when Carmela tells him to leave; she threatens to call a lawyer and get a restraining order.
As Tony lies in the pool, Carmela confronts him about a minor annoyance, which escalates into another argument in which she reveals her feelings for Furio.
[2] For The Star-Ledger in Newark, New Jersey, Alan Sepinwall described the episode as "short on gunplay but long on emotional darts thrown by Mr. and Mrs.
Soprano" and praised the dramatization of characters' conflict as "more gripping than any mob-sanctioned hit ever could have been"; however, Sepinwall criticized certain subplots as adding little substance.
Brian Ford Sullivan of The Futon Critic ranked "Whitecaps" eleventh out of the 50 best TV episodes of 2002, praising the performances of Falco and Gandolfini as "a magnificent example of acting at its finest".